10 Horror Movies That Prove Less Is More
5. The Lodge
This psychological horror film from Goodnight Mommy filmmakers Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala revolves around soon-to-be stepmother Grace (Riley Keough), who becomes stranded at a lodge with her fiancee's (Richard Armitage) two children over Christmas.
The Lodge is absolutely a film best watched while knowing as little as possible about the story - I'd recommend not even watching the trailer, to be honest.
Know simply that it riffs on familiar horror movie themes - namely family, isolation, and paranoia - and remixes them in ways both clever and deeply unsettling.
A few brief moments of visceral brutality notwithstanding, The Lodge is almost entirely cerebral in its horror, leaving the audience to meditate on the increasingly strange sights witnessed throughout.
Rather than let the story devolve into played-out supernatural hokum, Franz and Fiala are explicitly concerned with building a suffocating air of dread, and that they do masterfully. Its bleak tone won't be for all tastes, but adventurous horror fans will love it.